Ah, so I am coming back to my roots. Writing.

When I was a kid, my parents (before my father died) used to introduce me as “the writer”. This embarrassed me for some reason. So much so, that I grew up and decided to be an actress?

Well, I am back. The writer.

Reviewing some of my old works from childhood to teen years to twenties. And I was good. Here are some. About love. What else? Written while I was a waitress. (A damn good one). The evolution of a relationship.

Series: The Evolution of a Relationship

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Sidework

Let’s say it starts like this:

You are doing something irrelevant as refilling bowls of sugar

and in a moment as fast as a word

you get the feeling.

That feeling.

The authority of it is what catches you off guard

what takes you in its net, in its wings.

The feeling itself has been there before.

You know this slight drop of heart, the stomach curling into itself,

the Am I still breathing?

All that’s familiar.

But what you know this time,

what you are certain of as you watch

the sand in the sugar smooth into a white silk

there in the back of a restaurant,

what you are certain as the sugar about is this:

you are powerless.

You know that by the time the last bowl is filled

you will have given over.

You will have no choice

but to finish what you started there in the back of the restaurant.

You will put on your coat and walk away.

You will come home and want to touch things: everything:

The cat, the curtains, the countertop

to see if they are still the same.

You want to touch everything to see if it still matters the way it did

before the feeling as powerful and arbitrary as love itself

took hold of you and shook you up just enough

to want to come home and relearn the world.

To retouch all that you knew, all that was comfortable and common.

If what you thought you knew was the bed and the sink

and the sky and that palm tree twisting its muscles there on the corner of 9th

were still the same bed and sink and tree.

If your pillow still feels the same under your cheek-

because it all seems so sudden

and you fear it may not.

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Speaking in Code.

The good news is that we now have voices.

How are you?

I drove through the moon tonight.

I’m fine.

It was that low in the sky.

How are you?

A great big yellow ball buried in the blue part of the black-

I’m okay. Tired. I’ve never been so tired.

And I fell sort of in love with the sky right then.

Go to sleep then.

It only took an instant and I was smitten.

I can’t go to sleep.

And yet, as in love as I was, what left my body was just air, bear-like and strong.

Go to sleep.

But the good news is that we now have voices.

I still have so much to do though.

Had I not been alone in my car driving toward the moon that quiet air would have a voice.

You’ve done enough.

Beauty, unremitting like this, so hard to come by-

It’s never enough. There is so much more to do.

And yet it is everywhere, this beauty.

You can rest now.

The voice would say things if it could, the voice trapped in the car, the voice headed for the moon.

Okay. Good night, you.

On the way to your play the moon was close enough to the earth, I had to-

Wait, don’t go yet. Listen to my voice:

I had to enter the moon.

I’m listening.

It was the first time in my life I have seen a moon so full, so close to me.

You make my heart hurt.

What I had to go through to get to you-

What does that mean, I make your heart hurt?

So attainable, I had to take it, that moon, there on the way to your play.

It means: I love you.

You can’t ignore something so beautiful.

Did you happen to see the moon tonight?

I finally found my voice there on the moon, that’s the good news.

Yes, yes. I saw the moon tonight. It was so low in the sky I almost drove right through it.

You shone up there tonight on that stage, everyone had to stop and remember to breathe.

The moon was so beautiful tonight it made my heart hurt.

We all clapped and then remembered the good news: we have voices now.

It means: I love you.

We can stop gesturing, we can speak now of what you are, of what we saw up there.

Welcome to the moon.

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Of course there are more. Does the evolution of a relationship ever stop evolving? I hesitate to even publish these as my brain is yelling ” But no one reads poetry!!”. And then I remember that it doesn’t matter. I create art because I must.

I teach because I must. What is it in your life that you feel you must do? Your calling? Your dharma?

(Stay tuned for the next two.)

~

Next Manifestation Workshop is in NYC at Pure Yoga West Saturday April 2nd 2-4 pm and then Santa Monica at the Yoga Collective Sat April 30th 5-8 pm with wine tastings after.